On Wed, 9 Nov 1994 WIDDER@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Out of curiosity, does anyone know how this immense international system
> called the internet is funded? I had heard once that there was actually
> military funding involved, though that could be entirely wrong. (this is
> not meant to bring up some 'ethical' debate over the parties that finance
> this system, it's just curiosity.)
Yes, originally the Internet was created by the DoD for purely military
purposes -- sharing information about the latest weapon between
universities, stuff like that. It is my understanding that it was used
extensively during the Gulf War by the military (obviously, they didn't
use the foucault list for those purposes). And I think that a lot of the
funding still comes from the US Government (perhaps not the Pentagon, I'm
not sure) but it is slowly being sold off to private corporate interests.
Ben Attias
> Out of curiosity, does anyone know how this immense international system
> called the internet is funded? I had heard once that there was actually
> military funding involved, though that could be entirely wrong. (this is
> not meant to bring up some 'ethical' debate over the parties that finance
> this system, it's just curiosity.)
Yes, originally the Internet was created by the DoD for purely military
purposes -- sharing information about the latest weapon between
universities, stuff like that. It is my understanding that it was used
extensively during the Gulf War by the military (obviously, they didn't
use the foucault list for those purposes). And I think that a lot of the
funding still comes from the US Government (perhaps not the Pentagon, I'm
not sure) but it is slowly being sold off to private corporate interests.
Ben Attias